Mavic Refresh Program

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They're a huge company that wouldn't get an A+ rating with the BBB if there were more unhappy customers than happy ones.

The BBB is just a club at best, and a protection racket at worst.

On Nov. 10 [2010], Connecticut Attorney General and U.S. Senator-elect Richard Blumenthal wrote the Council of Better Business Bureaus to complain that "BBB's rating system is based, in part, on the payment of inadequately disclosed accreditation fees." He urged the BBB to "de-couple its ratings entirely from the paying of dues." Blumenthal had been angered to discover that a business called Custom Basements of Connecticut, which won an award from the Connecticut BBB at a ceremony where he was guest speaker, went bankrupt shortly thereafter, taking with it tens of thousands of dollars allegedly collected for work never done and occasioning a lawsuit from, yes, Blumenthal's own office.

The Council of Better Business Bureaus cried uncle one week after receiving Blumenthal's letter (which was also one week after the 20/20 report). It agreed to end its practice of giving additional rating points merely for being a member and promised to engage a third party in a review process. Letting bygones be bygones, it replaced the Boston Ritz-Carlton's F grade with a (previously unachievable) A-plus and Spago's B-minus with an A-minus. (The Southern California BBB had already changed Disneyland's F to an A after bloggers complained; that, too, is now an A-plus.) Even so, Blumenthal stated in a press release that he still found BBB ratings "unreliable and suspect."